In today’s environment, companies in Rogers, Arkansas depend on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their business. The company functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, rely on fast and reliable Internet access.
Our dependence on access to The Internet will continue to grow in the coming months and years.
From email to data sharing, video conferencing to VoIP, and data archiving to Internet commerce, the web is ubiquitous. What solution bet fits your needs? A cable modem may be satisfactory. Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Gigabit Internet? What does your Rogers company need? Does it require 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg access to The Internet point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
The needs of your particular company must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Is the web primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Is the web used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? You may be hosting the data in Rogers, Arkansas and remote locations rely on this.
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? Will your business suffer from the lull? Is your success reliant on uptime? Ask yourself these questions before making any purchases. The answers will help you determine what is right for you.
High-speed access to The web is required by all businesses. When picking the correct broadband, balancing the costs and benefits to your organization is imperative. While many providers like to spout technical terminologies such as:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
Workers for most companies in Rogers, Arkansas have some need to access the internet during the course of their job. Third party applications, organization research or development and e-commerce are just a few of the ways the net may be needed.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be adequate. You should consider more than that if you have more workers. Also keep in mind whether your workers need to access the web at the same time.
Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. On the other hand, if your company requires that its employees download many documents or images and videos, Internet speed becomes more important.
Are you performing backups? If, as recommended, you conduct remote backups from every single desk, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web. This will allow you to sync your backup data.
Do you use a file sharing service like Google drive or DropBox? After a file is saved, it goes to the cloud and then to someone else’s computer. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.
Are you interested in high-speed business Internet? Depending on where you are located, you may want to look into the viability of gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet. They are commonly found in “lit buildings” in Rogers that have already been wired by a carrier. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.
If you have to bring Metro Ethernet into a new building, it can be expensive but bringing that connection to an office or suite within the building is usually not. Also, securing high-speed access to The Internet using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its availability.
Does your company host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Do your headquarters have a hosted Internet application that must be accessed regularly by 40 or 50 branch offices? Does your office host the point of sale (POS) system for every single store in a large retail chain? Are you a law firm hosting data for multiple office locations?
If your company hosts its programs and information at a central location, people outside of that location need to have access in order to conduct company. For those people, no Internet connection means no work gets done. Is the intranet solution you are choosing sufficiently reliable? Is it stable enough to support simultaneous connections from different places?
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the internet. A cable modem may also be sufficient in this situation. High-speed Internet access is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. The support you need could not be provided by a cable modem.
Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. While the monthly rate is lower, the bandwidth is generally shared among other tenants. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Cable operators differ but many have prescribed limits on the bandwidth amount that they can deliver within a set community. The bandwidth branches off to the multiple buildings, offices and tenants within them. With a 30-megabyte connection, you may not get to that speed during the working day. Is getting 7 when you expect 30 a problem?
Guaranteed bandwidth and dedicated bandwidth are solutions that some carriers offer. If you want your very own bandwidth that is not used by anyone else, you should consider this. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits at all times.
Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. In your office out to the internet you can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit providers
Here, providers deliver enough high-speed to the building, so that it can be split among various tenants. The carrier has the right amount so that everyone gets the contracted speed that has been promised.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some providers offer in Rogers, problems arise and circuits can fail. How can you decrease the chance of an outage?
Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.
There are two types of redundancy to consider.
With the first kind, you receive several circuits but they all come from the same carrier. This provides some protection when there are certain failures. Multiple circuits can help for example, when there is a physical line issue or a problem with a router port. However, if that carrier has a greater outage to your entire region or there is a line damaged outside of your office building, you may have both or all circuits go down. This is not foolproof, but does offer some protection.
Utilizing circuits from two different carriers is the second kind of redundancy. You may want your circuits to appear and act as if they are one and come from the same source. If so you can use IP address allocations and advanced routers to do so. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy offers far greater protection. When one carrier has a problem like an outage or some other failure, you have another one that works.
The carriers you choose for your redundant circuits should have different physical pathways in Rogers. This is an important consideration when trying to obtain the most redundancy. If at all possible, you want to obtain circuits entering the premises on different sides. Ideally, the circuits will be going in different directions and toward various central organization spaces or data centers. What if there is some kind of catastrophic incident such as a fire or accident that impacts circuits within a region? Now, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.
It is true that Internet access costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Consider these scenarios:
The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office building. During organization hours, any of those tenants could be streaming video, performing massive file downloads, processing large volumes of phone calls and more. As available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Will calls be arbitrarily dropped? Will you sound muffled?
Your office is the hub of your enterprise: You might be a law practice that shares files, a retail operation that utilizes POS systems or a large accounting firm that needs to share databases. All of your places, whether 2 or 2000, count on your primary Internet connection to access and retrieve data. What happens if your circuit goes down? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Are your other offices able to do any work? Process new orders? Circulate necessary data? Do you know what your business needs? Be sure to fully understand your requirements. It will help you choose the correct solution. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. Do you operate a service where other systems communicate with yours by using an application program interface (API)? For example do other systems gain access to yours in order to calculate prices, prices, or to collect information that you serve up? What if other systems can’t connect to your office servers? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Your organization is completely dependent on the internet. Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. There would be no way to answer incoming calls of people trying to reach your representatives. Basically, you are out of company. Even for the most reputable call centers that already know of and use redundancy, is it sufficient? Can you truly rely on your providers? Are they as dependable as they claim? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
Clearly, there are many choices. Your decision will be based on different factors including your company needs and your budget. To summarize:
A single fifty, ten or five megabyte access to The Internet circuit may be sufficient to meet the needs of your small company, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. Gigabit service and Metro Ethernet options seem expensive. If you are in a lit building, however, they can be less than you think. Look into it. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.
You have a midsized company in Rogers, Arkansas; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. Optimally, multiple providers and multiple circuits will give you the most redundancy. But can you do this without doubling costs? Sometimes, yes. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. Availability and costs vary. Your specific location will determine what options you have. Please speak with one of our experts to find out what those are and how we can meet your needs.
The greatest risk of failure belongs to companies that have multiple places of company or offices. Redundant circuits must be an essential part of their systems. Multiple carriers would be great. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. Look at all of your options: Ethernet access services, gigabit Internet providers, Metro Ethernet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. The best mix of providers and services can maximize the productivity and efficiency of your company.
If you can place yourself in this category, it is essential that you have Metro Ethernet, point-to-point circuits and gigabit Internet circuits. If you want to ensure your valuable uptime, have redundant circuits from multiple providers as well as redundant hardware. You do not want any slowdowns or interruptions that often occur during spikes in usage. Avoid this by having sufficient bandwidth. Your circuits and hardware must be able to support a large number of fast and simultaneous connections.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your company. The circuit or circuits you have must stay within the parameters of your budget while still meeting your business needs. It is essential to choose the correct mix of hardware and circuits. Figuring out exactly what to put in the mix, can be a daunting task.
Our engineers can analyze your needs and create a free action plan for you. We will look at your current usage, demand levels and scope out a design to give you the resources you need while keeping your company up and running at a reasonable cost.
Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. It can take as little as 48 hours to provide a complete assessment.